Crashing Smackdown

Let me set the scene for you. I'm at The Command Center at the Triple A , which is one of the best staffed arenas in the country, by the way, trying to sort out my media credentials. People from production, security, law enforcement, all rolling by me. Lou, security chief of The White Room and tonight’s combination sidekick and bodyguard, is talking to his staff. Me, I’m working the phone.

In comes a behemoth of a man bellowing and drawing attention to himself. The man made it impossible for me to hear the cat I was talking to on the other end of the line.

“Yo, Killer,” I say to the monster. “I’m on the phone here.”

He stops and his shadow immediately engulfs me. I figure I better soft-pedal it a bit.

“Easy, Tiger. I’m just trying to hear my man inside,” I said to the man-beast.

“Tiger? Tiger?” The look in his eyes says dinner.

“Uh, Mr. Tiger.”

The man pauses then laughs, taps my shoulder with the weight of an anvil, and walks away.

“Do you know who that was?” asks Lou.

“No, who?” I say.

“Mark Gordon Henry.”

“Who the fuck is Mark Gordon Henry?”

“One of the world’s strongest men.”

We were at WWE’s Smackdown, and smack talk was what we’d come for.

That and a lot of highly melodramatic feats of fury between some of the biggest specimens on the planet. Kane, CM Punk, Batista, Shelton Benjamin, Stevie Richards, MVP – the line-up went on for a while. It went on for so long in fact that after a while I lost track, despite Lou’s crackerjack tutoring.

I do recall some crybaby blonde boy named Edge apologizing to an evil looking woman in a wheelchair (who I later learned was Smackdown GM Vickie Guerrero, wife of Chavo and lover of the crybaby in question). Seems Edge had lost to the Undertaker up in Orlando last Sunday and felt that he’d let her and her goons down. Boo fucking hoo.

Cuban-born ECW GM Armando Estrado offered apparent whipping boy Colin Delaney a fat contract – if he could beat The Big Show. One chokehold and two body slams later, it was clear that the April Fool’s Day joke was on Colin.

I’m sworn to secrecy about the results of the rest of the matches (Smackdown airs Friday), but I will say that The Big Show is one of the nicest cats I’ve ever met, even if he is 7 foot tall and weighs-in at almost 500 pounds.

Oh, and Marc Henry’s okay too, and I don’t say that because he’s Smackdown’s strongest man. I say it because his biceps are bigger than my ego and that gives me something to shoot at next time I’m mouthing off.